For those of you disappointed to learn that cow tipping is just an urban legend, take heart: you can tell tall tales about how you once demagnetized a cow.

Satellite images of cattle and deer herds suggest that low-frequency magnetic fields disrupt the tendency of four-legged animals to align their bodies with geomagnetic fields.

When herds stand next to power lines, which emit a mild electromagnetic field, they point in different directions. In the absence of power lines, they point along a north-south axis.

The findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, come from the same biologists who used Google Earth images to identify a bovine north-south tendency. Some commentators dismissed those results, or said they didn’t necessarily indicate a magnetic sixth sense.

“These findings constitute evidence for magnetic sensation in large mammals as well as evidence of an overt behavioral reaction to weak [extreme low-frequency magnetic fields] in vertebrates,” write the researchers.

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